ASCD WorkshopSingapore 2008

Implications and Applications of Educational Neuroscience for

School Supervision and Curriculum

John GeakeOxford Cognitive Neuroscience Education Forum

Oxford University, UK

ASCD WorkshopSingapore 2008

Implications and Applications of Educational Neuroscience for School Supervision and Curriculum

Session 3: Applications of Educational Neuroscience Research to

Teaching Curriculum in the Classroom

ASCD WorkshopSingapore 2008

Implications and Applications of Educational Neuroscience for School Supervision and Curriculum

Mathematical thinking

Effortful arithmetic: fMRI

Dehaene, The Number Sense,1997Dehaene & Naccache, Cognition, 2001

Repeated subtraction

Can neural cartography inform us about mathematical thinking in schools?

The functional modularity of brain organisation predicts that where necessary connections are not robust, there will be breakdowns in mathematical understanding.

Double dissociations of arithmetic processing

• addition vs subtraction vs multiplication vs division• numbers 1 to 6 vs numbers 7, 9 , 0• factual vs procedural vs conceptual knowledge • oral vs written problem presentation• number comprehension vs number production• reading/writing numbers vs calculation• exact calculation vs estimation

– bilateral inferior parietal for number comparison, estimation– left parietal + frontal for number facts, calculation

Double dissociations of arithmetic processing

• addition vs subtraction vs multiplication vs division• numbers 1 to 6 vs numbers 7, 9 , 0• factual vs procedural vs conceptual knowledge • oral vs written problem presentation• number comprehension vs number production• reading/writing numbers vs calculation• exact calculation vs estimation

– bilateral inferior parietal for number comparison, estimation– left parietal + frontal for number facts, calculation

Could preferred arithmetic computational strategies reflect individual differences in strengths of neural connectivities?

Does abstract mathematical thinking develop from concrete mathematical thinking?

Provocative answer: NO!

Neural representations of abstract symbols

Recent evidence that the function of a specific sub-region of the left fusiform gyrus (LFG) is the detection of generic symbolic sequences.

Contrast with evidence for the function of specific sub-regions of the right fusiform gyrus (RFG) to detect faces, and familiar objects.

Children’s understanding of fractions Mamede, Nunes & Bryant, PME, 2005

1/222Tuesday

1/233Monday

blue fraction?

redblue

Q: Does the fraction of blue cards change from Monday to Tuesday?

A: No (55%) Yes (45%)

The change of the brain activation patterns as children learn algebra equation solving

Qin et al, PNAS, 2004

10 pre-algebra adolescents

3 levels of difficulty x 5 days of learning

0-step: 1x + 0 = 41-step: 1x + 8 = 122-step: 7x + 1 = 29

Compare activations with adult algebra ‘experts’ Reduction in solving time over 5 days

The change of the brain activation patterns as children learn algebra equation solving

Qin et al, PNAS, 2004

RL

Same IP, AC, PFC areas as adults Decreasing PFC, IP activations over 5 days

=> children have a different neural trajectory for learning

Complex reasoning in Euclidean geometric proofKao & Anderson, IES, 2006

15 adults, fMRI, 2 x 3 factorial design

Complex reasoning in Euclidean geometric proofKao & Anderson, IES, 2006

The critical process to understand appears to be how proficient problem-solvers integrate problem givens and diagram information to support their logical inferences, and how this process differs in experts, proficient problem solvers, and novices

Left Parietal

0.00

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0.80

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1.20

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0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22

Time (sec) from Stimulus Onset

% B

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Model 1-Inference Model 3-Inferences Model Not ProvableData 1-Inference Data 3-Inferences Data Not Provable

Right Anterior Prefrontal

-0.100.000.100.200.300.400.500.600.700.800.90

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22Time (sec) from Stimulus Onset

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Model 1-Inference Model 3-Inferences Model Not ProvableData 1-Inference Data 3-Inferences Data Not Provable

Winning streaks: the Hot Hand effect

In the case of basketball, statisticians have found little to no correlation between a given shot and the results of the prior attempt.

Even random processes with inanimate objects, such as coin-flipping, can yield occasional long steaks.

Bruce Burns, Cognitive Psychology, 2004

Recent fMRI evidence has found that specific areas of the brain have increased activation when people experience events producing a streak of the same outcome.

This is consistent with what has long been observed that people's future choices can be influenced by a streak of events.

Human cognition is not statistical

• intuitively process small numbers– babies– other species

• cannot process large numbers– millions or billions

• generalise from the particular– someone has to win the lottery

• subjectivise the improbable– my lotto numbers are my children’s birthdays

Spatial imagery in deductive reasoning: a functional MRI study

Knauff et al, Cognitive Brain Research, 2002

12 participants, fMRI, relational and conditional reasoning.

The results indicate that reasoning activated an occipitoparietal–frontal network, including

the prefrontal cortex the cingulate gyrus, the superior and inferior parietal cortex, the precuneus (BA 7), the visual association cortex (BA 19).

The activated occipito-parietal pathway is well known to be involved in spatial perception and spatial working memory.

Activation in the prefrontal cortical areas and in the anterior cingulate gyrus indicates higher cognitive functions.

In conclusion, reasoners envisage and inspect spatially organized mental models to solve deductive inference problems.

Intraparietal cortex as a potential substrate for a number sense Eger et al, Neuron, 2003

In an event-related fMRI study, we presented numbers, letters, and colours in the visual and auditory modality, asking subjects to respond to target items within each category.

In the absence of explicit magnitude processing, numbers compared with letters and colours across modalities activated a bilateral region in the horizontal intraparietal sulcus.

This stimulus-driven number-specific intraparietal response supports the idea of a supramodal number representation that is automatically accessed by presentation of numbers and may code magnitude information.

Why the parietal cortex for magnitude AND visualisation?

Parietal cortex evolved to help us find our way home

Whole-body propriocentrism

Geometry and trigonometry in the real world

Classroom application: LOGO Turtle!

ASCD WorkshopSingapore 2008

Implications and Applications of Educational Neuroscience for School Supervision and Curriculum

Creative thinking

Fluid analogising as the underpinning cognitive process enabling transfer, expertise and innovation

In creative thinking:“A native talent for perceiving analogies is … the leading fact in genius of every order.” William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890/1950)

In education:“A characteristic of good teachers and scholars is their ability to create analogies for explanation and clarification.” Geake & Hansen, 2005

In scientific modelling, musical composition and improvisation, humour, literature …

In fluid analogies the target analog is inexact, reflecting the dynamic nature of the world

Letter string analogies 1

If abc ⇒ abd, then ijk ⇒ ?

ijl

ijd

Hofstadter, Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies, 1995

Letter string analogies 2

abc ⇒ abd, pqqrrr ⇒ ?

pqqrrdpqqrrspqqssspqqssss

Neural correlates of fluid analogising 1

Covariance with NART verbal IQ in LDPFC, BA 9 and 45/46

Geake & Hansen, NeuroImage, 2005

Adaptation of Copycat Hofstadter & Mitchell, 1993

Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight

Jung-Beeman et al, PLOS, 2004

FMRI revealed increased activity in the right hemisphere anterior superior temporal gyrus for insight relative to noninsight solutions. The same region was active during initial solving efforts.

People sometimes solve problems with a unique process called insight, accompanied by an “Aha!” experience. It has long been unclear whether different cognitive and neural processes lead to insight versus noninsight solutions, or if solutions differ only in subsequent subjective feeling.

EEG recordings revealed a sudden burst of high-frequency (gamma-band) neural activity in the same area beginning 0.3 s prior to insight solutions.

Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight

Jung-Beeman et al, PLOS, 2004

The right anterior temporal area is associated with making connections across distantly related information during comprehension.

Although all problem solving relies on a largely shared cortical network, the sudden flash of insight occurs when solvers engage distinct neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections that previously eluded them.

How do novelists novelise novel novels?

How do our brains integrate working memory, long term memory, decision making, sequencing of symbolic representations, conceptual inter-relationships, and emotional mediation?

... when the information is incomplete, and often contradictory?

Our brains make up stories!

ASCD WorkshopSingapore 2008

Implications and Applications of Educational Neuroscience for School Supervision and Curriculum

Linguistic thinking

Posner & Raichle, 1994

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) images metabolism in active areas of the brain using emissions of a radioactive tracer (oxygen in glucose) in the blood.

Fischbach, Scientific American, 1992, courtesy M. Raichle

all of which we do simultaneously and in synchrony

The School of Love, by Carevaggio

Cupid learns to read and write

The teacher is Hermes (Mercury)

Even the gifted son of two gods does not have an innate ability for literacy

Neural pathways for reading

Courtesy John Stein, Oxford

Left fusiform gyrus - Visual word form area?

Recent functional imaging studies have referred to a posterior region of the left midfusiform gyrus as the "visual word form area" (VWFA).

Bruce D. McCandliss, Laurent Cohen and Stanislas Dehaene

Left fusiform gyrus - Visual word form area?

Bruce D. McCandliss, Laurent Cohen and Stanislas Dehaene

Left fusiform gyrus - Visual word form area?

We argue that neither the neuropsychological nor neuroimaging data are consistent with a cortical region specialized for visual word form representations.

Specifically, there are no reported cases of pure alexia who have deficits limited to visual word form processing and damage limited to the left mid-fusiform.

Functional imaging data demonstrate that the so-called VWFA is activated by normal subjects during tasks that do not engage visual word form processing such as naming colours, naming pictures, reading Braille, repeating auditory words, and making manual action responses to pictures of meaningless objects.

If the region participates in several functions as defined by its interactions with other cortical areas, then identifying the neural system sustaining visual word form representations requires identification of the set of regions involved.

Price CJ, Devlin JT

Left fusiform gyrus - Visual word form area?

Lower activation in VWFA with dyslexics

Neuroimaging and Dyslexia: An Electrophysiological

Study

Jenny Thomson & Usha GoswamiCentre for Neuroscience in Education,

University of Cambridge

Torsten BaldewegInstitute of Child Health, UCL, London

The Development of Speech Processing: Phonological Awareness: Word Representations

semantic representation

phonologicalrepresentation

motorprogramme

Basic Unit of Speech Processing – The Syllable

g r

gr

a s p

asp

graspsyllable

onset rime

phonemes(from reading)

Phonological Awareness and Reading

Developmental sequence of phonological skills appears to be language-universal

Phonological awareness develops in the approximatesequence syllable - onset/rime - phoneme across alllanguages so far studied

Awareness of syllables and onset/rimes developsprior to literacy, awareness of phonemes develops withlearning to read

Accordingly, rate of phonemic development should depend on orthographic transparency

Event-related potentials (ERP)

Psychometric Functions: Rise time Categorisation

Dyslexia CA RL

Slope -0.03 -0.12** -0.06 (0.04) (0.08) (0.05)

PNAS, 2002

Correlations to behaviour

-0.52*PA

-0.55*0.89***Spell

-0.470.86***0.80***Read

-0.64*0.80***0.74**0.54*15 LM

Risetime PASpellRead

Chinese dyslexia: different in brain function

Using functional MRI to study language-related activation of cortical regions in dyslexics, we found reduced activation in the left middle frontal gyrus region in Chinese dyslexics versus controls. By contrast, Chinese dyslexics did not show functional differences from normal subjects in the more posterior brain systems that have been shown to be abnormal in alphabetic-language dyslexics.

Wai Ting Siok , Zhendong Niu , Zhen Jin , Charles A. Perfetti, and Li Hai Tan, 2008

Structural differences in grey matter only in frontal regionWai Ting Siok , Zhendong Niu , Zhen Jin , Charles A. Perfetti, and Li Hai Tan, 2008

Significant correlation between gray matter volume and activation in the language task in this same area.

Chinese dyslexia: differences in brain structure and function

Conclusion: structural and functional basis for dyslexia varies between alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages.

Wai Ting Siok , Zhendong Niu , Zhen Jin , Charles A. Perfetti, and Li Hai Tan, 2008

“Reading is not a skill that is innate, and hence the mechanisms that the brain will draw upon differ depending on the demands of a particular writing system “. Eden, 2008

Helping dyslexics in China will require different methods than those used in the West. The study also lends tentative support to the possibility that specific brainmiswiring leading to dyslexia for an English reader might not lead to dyslexia for a Chinese reader.

Dr. Tan said, intervention programs for dyslexic children "all follow Western traditions, emphasizing phonological awareness of spoken words." The new study suggests shifting the emphasis to teaching "effective links among visual shape, sound and meaning of characters." He also said that some dyslexics in English and other alphabetic languages might fare better through a "whole word" approach to reading, a technique that has declined in favor in recent years compared with phonetic teaching methods.

Chinese dyslexia: educational implications?

Dyslexia in late bilinguals?Oxford Cognitive Neuroscience Forum

Processing the written French word: A case of induced dyslexia? Lynn Erler, 2006

A large-scale study (N = 359 Year 7 students) on French curriculum outcomes arising from the current emphasis on conversation over grammar.

The major finding was that these children were employing English phonological referents to read written French. Interviews with students produced statements often similar to those of dyslexics learning to read.

“I’d just pronounce them like English words, just to help me”“the letters are all muddled”“when they are on the board they look like a different word than what you’ve been repeating”

  Hypotheses were proposed of a dissociated activity between superior temporal gyrus for assembled phonology, and middle temporal gyrus for addressed phonology, in students failing to learn to read written French. It was suggested that these hypotheses could be tested through the neuroimaging of such students.

Chinese dyslexia is a relatively common condition among children in Singapore. 

Confusion between the English and Chinese phonetic systems can arise when Chinese children learn to read and write English as well.

Your child may have Chinese dyslexia if he manifests these problems:1. confusion with similar-looking Chinese characters;2. difficulty in understanding that the same Chinese characters can have different pronunciation and meaning;3. difficulty in understanding that the meaning of a Chinese character may depend on its context;4. inability to comprehend that different Chinese characters may have the same pronunciation but different tones or the same pronunciation and tone but different meanings;5. reversal problems with writing Chinese characters, i.e. difficulty in reading Chinese radicals vertically or horizontally; and6. problems with the proper sequences of strokes in writing Chinese characters.

Chinese dyslexia is a relatively common condition among children in Singapore. 

Experts recommend these tips:

• Teach your child at an early age how to read and write using simplified Chinese characters.

• Familiarize your child with the Chinese language system by teaching him to read with the help of hanyu pinyin.

• Teach “form study” or the internal structure of the Chinese character to make him understand that Chinese characters consist of components called radicals and that a character consists of a semantic radical (giving a clue to the meaning of the character) and a phonetic radical (offering a clue to its pronunciation).

ASCD WorkshopSingapore 2008

Implications and Applications of Educational Neuroscience for School Supervision and Curriculum

Musical thinking

Neural correlates of musical abilities

How do musical abilities relate to other cognitive abilities?

Do maths and music go together?

Musically talented vs. normal adults:Hausdorff dimension of frontal EEG

pseudo-classical

high musicalcomplexity

pseudo-jazzmediummusical

complexity

pseudo-rocklow musicalcomplexity

Musicallytalented

highest intermediate intermediate

Unmusical intermediate intermediate lowest

Birbaumer et al (1994)

Complex music produces complex brain activity in complex people, simple music excites simple brain activity in simple people

Birbaumer, Lutzenberger, Rau, Mayer-Kress,

Choi & Braun (1994)

Musical Abilities and Working Memory

Used age-normed tests of musical abilities (Gordon’s Musical Aptitude Profile, MAP)

Each item requires listening to short phrase played on a violin, and then choosing which is the better response phrase from a pair.

Uses WM to remember and recall, to compare (analogise), and to evaluate.

Musical Abilities and Working Memory

Compared with children of similar age, young mozarts have significantly higher scores on musical tests of pitch and rhythm which require better working memories for musical information …

… as well as on tests for perception of musical coherence, requiring superior abilities to process sequential and holistic information. Young mozarts also have higher scores on tests for focussed attention, all of which suggests that these children have enhanced frontal lobe functioning, as do gifted children in general (Geake, 1997).

Musical Memory

In experienced musicians, musical memory is not affected by withdrawal of auditory feedback

… or visual feedback

… but can be affected by interfering with tactile feedback through timing

PET studies of piano performance of Bach preludesfrom memory

by Larry Parsons (University of Texas)

Musical MemoryPET studies by Larry Parsons found:

bilateral temporal activations (music is NOT just on the right!)

neural correlates especially in the cerebellum …

suggests that the cerebellum is involved in nonmotor, nonsomatic, sensory, or cognitive processing (especially timing).

Larger cerebellum (5%) in musicians than non- musicians suggests that the cerebellum is involved in making musical memories.

The Mozart EffectThe temporary enhancement of spatial reasoning abilities immediately after listening to a piece of music by Mozart.

First measured with American university students in a laboratory (Rascher & Shaw, 1993).

Found in primary school children in their classrooms (Ivanov & Geake, 2003)

The Mozart Effect

Explained by the organising effect of Mozart’s music on brain function … auditory cross-modal cohesion …

BUT …• the effect is temporary• only 50% success (50% failure) to replicate• Bach effect (Ivanov & Geake, 2003) etc• Mozart Effect with rats• not g but limited to temporo-spatial reasoning• hype about boosting babies IQ by listening to Mozart

How do musical abilities relate to other cognitive abilities?

Gagné (1985) and many others have pointed out that traditional measures of creativity and intelligence have only low positive correlations.

However, music teachers and performers report that high-level musical achievers and creators seem to have high levels of general intelligence.

Limits of correlation

Sergeant and Thatcher (1974) drew attention to the relationship in statistics between correlation indices, r, and the reliability of the measures being correlated, viz., that r is constrained to be less than the reliability. Since the reliability of music aptitude tests is often "disconcertingly low", typically around 0.4, r cannot rise above about 0.4. Taking this into account, Sergeant and Thatcher showed that corrected correlations between musical aptitude and intelligence are typically high, with r exceeding 0.8.

Does general cognitive ability underlie musical achievement?

This is a one-way association: high musical ability implies high intelligence but not vice versa. Musical ability, then, develops from the interaction of intelligence with other factors, especially a musical environment in the home. Nevertheless, "a favourable musical environment cannot redeem the absence of the level of intelligence necessary for musical cognition, nor can intelligence alone suffice for the development of musicality" (Sergeant and Thatcher, 1974, p. 56).

EEG Neurofeedback and Musicians John Gruzelier, Imperial College London • All of the students who received

neurofeedback training were found to have improved their performances.

• those who had received the alpha/theta protocol improved their performance the most, between 13.5 and 17 per cent.

• "These results show that neurofeedback can have a marked effect on musical performance. While it has a role in stress reduction by reducing the level of stage fright, the magnitude and range of beneficial effects on artistic aspects of performance have wider implications than alleviating stress".